Home is Where we Hook-up

After a hearty breakfast of pancakes, scrambled eggs and sausage, we were on the road by 7:30 a.m. We decided to follow more advice and take a toll road north of Veracruz, completely bypassing both Veracruz and Catemaco. Yep, we were gonna miss out on the monkeys Miguel had told us about at the border, but we had to get to Belize sometime! So, bypass it was. The advice on following this route was to get an early start, and bring lots of money, the toll road is very expensive. After spending the summer traveling the Attiki Odos toll highway in Greece at $2.70 Euro per booth, we thought the statement that the Mexican toll roads were “expensive” was probably just a matter of opinion.

Our challenge for the day was to get beyond Villahermosa which had suffered major flooding on Oct. 31st. Finding reports of current conditions proved to be difficult, we were not even sure if we would be able to get through. If the roads were passable, there was no chance we were even considering camping in the area…not with 300,000 devastated and now homeless people.

After long hours on the wonderful roads of the toll highway, we decided to shoot for Palenque as our destination. Well beyond Villahermosa, it was unlikely that we would make it before nightfall, but we pushed hard.

The tolls turned out to be very expensive, we were charged as though we were a semi-truck with multiple axles. The first toll we tried to explain that we were a single axle vehicle, but with dual wheels it was an impossible argument. By the end of the day, we’d collected receipts totaling $1000 pesos, or $100 U.S. dollars. Would we ever learn that the Church’s know what they speak of? Ha! But, just look at the beautiful road, it was worth it.

It was a scenic drive, abundant with pineapple and banana fields. Farmers sold pineapple along the road, beneath underpasses – which was a good thing since there was a lot of rain coming down that day. We arrived in Villahermosa to find the roads passable, and couldn’t escape the cliche that “everything happens for a reason”. Had we not been held up in Texas waiting for the vehicle title, we would have been smack in the middle of the nightmare and chaos of a city flooded equal to the devastation of Katrina. Well, no, we would have found an alternate route, but you know what I mean. For us, it was an uneventful passing through.

On to Palenque we pushed. I was nervous about the dusk coming on, with miles still to go. The warnings about not driving at night are not in reference to being held up by banditos, I can assure you of that. The warnings are because of free farm animals, broken down vehicles, rocks left in the road from said broken down vehicles, and on and on. Of course, you wouldn’t want to break down on the road at night, making yourself vulnerable to any bad egg that might come along. Keith carried on and we made it to our destination in Palenque under a full moon sky.

…beyond that some things change, they are usually right on the money.

Our second day driving in Mexico, we anticipated getting to Catemaco, Veracruz. This plan was against everything we had read about the next 200 miles of road. Church’s book says “You may doubt that it will take you 7 hours to drive only 209 miles…”, we blow off the warning, making reference to the error in our book about the Campestre Altamira, and reminding ourselves they are different sorts of travelers. We should make it to Catemaco easy!

Instead of backtracking from the Airport to the bypass, we found ourselves as lost as lost can get in the heart of Tampico. Big no-no, according to anyone who’s ever done it. The city is a network of one-way narrow paths, that quickly deteriorate from asphalt to rocks and dirt. Our good start for the day had been eaten up in figuring out how to escape the city – took us about an hour. No, we did not stop for directions. Sounds like we were lucky not to get a ticket being down there with an RV.

After a series of fluke-luck decisions and general attempts to keep a heading near to the direction we wanted to end up in, we found ourselves on the correct highway, paying for a toll that we had been expecting to see. Wow! Back on track, at 8 a.m. hooray! After the toll, the road just went to complete hell, which made us laugh at first,

“And this is the road we pay to be on!”

But the miles wore on, relentlessly dangerous. We learned that some of the potholes were almost worth our life to swerve in front of on-coming Semi-truck traffic to avoid. Humor became harder to find. It’s funny again, now, to look back on – like the one bridge that had a pothole – it was actually a full-blown hole – and you could see all the way through down to the water. A guy on a motorcycle wouldn’t stand a chance! We’ll see how funny it is on the way back. It became clear early on that we would not be getting to Catemaco.

The drive was not completely without merit. Besides maneuvering through dusty little villages, trying not to hit dogs, donkeys or little kids holding plastic bags of peeled oranges for sale, the road ran through some gorgeous mountainous topography. Having never traveled around Hawaii, I can only imagine the similarities as we passed massive banana, pineapple and orange groves – some of them growing off steep lush hillsides.

This seems to be the best way to transport the oranges,

And I laughed that we have traded the roadside veggie & olive oil stands in Greece for the fruit & honey of Mexico. These stands are always so picturesque, no matter what country.

Checking our map & guidebook, I suggested we make a slight detour and have our lunch at the ruins of El Tajin. We gave ourselves about a 3 hour break. Once we arrived at the ruins we parked in a tree covered, grassy area. I made tuna sandwiches and Keith chatted up the local “parking attendant”, or the guy he gave a few pesos to ‘keep an eye’ on things for us. Of course, Zoey would help 🙂 This was our first exploration of ruins so far on the trip – and my breath was completely taken away. I called my mom to tell her “Happy Thanksgiving” from beneath the famous Pyramid of Niches.

Most of what is visible at the site today was built around AD 600 or 700 and was unknown to present society until 1785 when an official found it while looking for illegal tobacco plantings. This Pyramid of the Niches is believed to have had 365 niches, suggesting the building was used as a kind of calendar. Keith and I wandered through the ball courts and pyramids, clicking away with the camera – ooooohh’ing and awwww’ing at the great discovery within this jungle. With our memory card full, and battery dead (both the camera and us, ha ha) we made our way back to the squeakster to hit the road again. We backtracked to get on the main highway, and headed for an RV park listed in our book, the Quinta Alicia – said they have internet!

As we made the final turn to the coastal road, we had our first and only encounter with a machine gun wearing bandito looking for a “propina for coffee?” I said no. Keith looked over at me and repeated, “No?” All the books say to say no! I stood firm, “No” I said it very politely, and the guy looked like his feelings were hurt, but not like he was going to shoot us. He waved us on. Keith asks me

“Did you really just tell the guy with the machine gun, ‘no’???”

I said “well, two things. One, I don’t even know how much a coffee costs around here. And two, if he’d have gotten out the squeegee and washed the windows like the kids at the stoplight, I’d have happily given him something.”

Keith says that in all his years, this was hands down the hardest day of driving he has ever done. We arrived in Costa Esmeralda around 4:45 p.m., a mere 209 miles from Tampico done in 6.5 hours driving. This is about when we stop second guessing the Church’s.

…is that things change.

From Matamoros we headed straight to Tampico. Now, the Church’s do this drive in two days, but we felt the need to get a move on after spending so much time in Texas, so we altered the route. Plus, it’s obvious they are a different sort of traveler than we are and usually start their day a few hours later than Keith and I do, 350 miles in a day is not unreasonable. It was a wonderful day of driving on excellent two and four-lane free roads, both of which would be conditions we would not see again for most of the trip onward.

When there were road signs we followed them, verifying as much information as possible with the guidebook. We also had the atlas, but never managed to find a real, good, road map. There were times I was frustrated by that, but it turned out not to really matter. Our destination was the Campestre Altamira Holiday Resort, and it was looking good that we would arrive in the late afternoon, perfect for a first days experience driving in Mexico. We followed the guidebooks instructions on how to bypass the city of Tampico, thereby avoiding a toll, and much publicized hassles to RV’ers by cops. The problem? We passed the 2 km mark as stated in the book and watched as we passed the Campestre Residential on our right.

Hmmmm. That did not look good. Keith flipped around, this time we pulled into the gated driveway of the new residential development. The guard approached and I held up the book, pointing to a drawing of a camping spot at this very location and asked “Campestre Altamira???” Noooo, no, Campestre Residential. “Ahhh, si….” I responded, with a gigantic smile. Rolling up the window I said between my teeth “we’re screwed”.

The very last line on page 267 of the camping guide said, in bold:

TAMPICO AIRPORT

I hadn’t even seen that before, but then, I was anticipating overnighting in a resort of sorts -so who needed any extra info. Page 268 of the book continues, “Many people spend the night in the Tampico Airport Parking lot…..the Airport is not hard to find” Sold! For $160 pesos ($16) we parked overnight in the military and police patrolled parking. I reheated leftover fish dinner on the stove and we sat in the cab of the squeakster people watching until dark.

Ok, so it wasn’t the perfect camping solution, heck, it was better than the night at Texas Springs, in Death Valley – at least here we could run the generator! Our adventure had definitely begun.

On the dark early morning of Nov. 21st we drove to the border in Brownsville. There was some confusion on our part as to which bridge we should cross, there are three choices. We chose the one that we had seen in our previous travels – and it was the wrong one. The Mexican border agent looked at the vehicle, and then looked for the hologram permit that we were supposed to have displayed on the windshield. I said, nervously,

“We picked the wrong bridge…how do we get back to the bridge with customs?”

He waved us along, explaining in Spanish how we should backtrack to the bridge where we would handle all our paperwork. So, here we were, piece of cake…in Matamoros, Mexico. We made two left turns and found our way to the customs office, parked in the little dirt lot out back, took our portfolio of paperwork and began the process of making ourselves legal to be in the country. We were advised by the Church’s book, and by our Mexican insurance agent at Sanborn’s to get started at customs as early in the day as possible. Also, it was suggested that we not mention that we were going to Belize, as that seems to put a wrench in an already kooky system. Fine, we picked Catemaco, Veracruz as our destination. Great advice on both counts.

I’ve read some hilarious tellings of this border crossing experience, how much nonsense it all seems, nothing adds up, there is very little rhyme or reason to any of the procedure. But, we came fully prepared and had very little incident. We stood in one line, got our 6 month Mexican Visa stamped, took that paper to the copy guy, who made a single copy, went to another line and handed our original documents and 2 copies of everything to a man behind the glass. We were there for an uneventful 45 minutes, and walked out with the coveted shiny hologram sticker to display in the windshield. We were legal!

When we returned to the vehicle, though, here came Miguel, the agent that handled our entry, and he was waving papers at us. Uh-oh – is the only thing a person can think when seeing this. In the office he had been nothing but business. Pleasant, but all business. Now, outside and away from his peers, Miguels smile flashed and he apologized that he’d missed one copy…it was an insignificant paper among them all, but he seemed to enjoy the few moments to chat with us.

“So, you go to Catemaco?”

“Yes, we are heading to Catemaco” It was true, that was where we were shooting for in the next few days. I was still following the “business” part of the protocol.

After confirming our travel destination, Miguel became quite animated. In doing so, I could only make out every 3rd or 4th word, but it had something to do with Catemaco, and monkeys…”you must see” he said, and then “I am from Catemaco, that is my region.”

We shook hands, smiles all around, thanked him for all his help, and the advice to see the monkeys in Catemaco. “Welcome to Mexico”, he said as we parted and he headed back to his office, we climbed into the squeakster to get headed down the road.